We are cracked, but beautiful. Our restoration is coming.
From my chair, right now, I see the calm image of Saint Anne through the Christmas tree.* This piece of nineteenth century stained glass, surrounded by more hideous twentieth century blue glass, is no longer valuable. The Church that removed it shipped it to me in such a way that hairline breaks run throughout. As a result, I paid nothing for this window.
This is good. Some things are too precious to buy. Even with the sad defects, the window is beautifully inspiring. My aging eyes, the defects of a broken world, cannot see the flaws from my chair. Some sad things work to good!
Over the years, I have written many words, taught many college students, and prayed in the light of this cracked bit of beauty. The older I get the more I realize that my life is, was, and will be full of cracks, defects, and I can only hope to retain some beauty. The plain lesson of the window to me has been the imperfection of this life, but the beauty that can still be found despite those imperfections.
We cannot fix ourselves, but the Creator can, has, and will.
Saint Anne herself is caught up to Paradise, safe for all time, kept by the good God. She knows no suffering and she is fully restored. As she is, so we can be.
Jesus, her grandson according to the flesh, was crucified and took the marks with Him to glory. We will see the print of the nails there and in context they will be beautiful. These are not, as in my case, the fractures of sin, but the marks sin made on Him who knew no sin. Jesus could wish to endure as He is, because as He is, there is no defect in Him. Anything we could do to Him could only magnify His underlying magnificence.
The same is not true of my window or of (most of) our lives. We are fractured through our own errors, carelessness, and vice. We are less than we could be, though God’s created beauty endures. No human is fundamentally ugly. All share the glory of God at bottom, but the marring is very great and sad.
I wish there was a way to restore this cracked stained glass and see the image as the image was before carelessness marred the piece. There is not a restoration available for any amount of money, no way to make the tiny breaks vanish. They are there, unless somehow the very glass could be recreated.
God is not limited as we are.
The Divine Workman will restore all things to total beauty. He works over eternity first to restore us and then to glorify us. This will not make us what we might have been before our broken history, but making something new, greater, out of all that has happened. I have one piece of stained glass, also broken (Saint Joan of Arc) that a restorer gave new black lead between the pieces that made the piece beautifully interesting. The “cracks” became joints and the new was different than the original, but no less beautiful.
We shall be changed in this manner: restored cracks and all.
God may some beauty remain visible in me. Restore me over eternity to an image of God.
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*For the last thirty-five years (or so!) every apartment, room in Mom and Dad’s house, or home has been dedicated to Saint Anne. Partly this is because of the community of Saint Anne in That Hideous Strength, the most prophetic book of the twentieth-century, and a model of the community in which we aspire to live. Mostly this is because of my Mom, Ann Reynolds, who made such a community reality when I was a boy. Mom was acting in the pattern of the mother of the Mother of God, Saint Anne.
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